Why fit-out & Autodesk are a good fit

The Autodesk team in Dubai recently ran a Technology & BIM event targeted toward the fit-out sector, examining the challenges which prevail, and looking at how technology can address these challenges.

The evening kicked off with opening remarks by Gavin Davids, Editor of Big Project Magazine.

"Fit-out projects in the GCC are expected to be worth around $9 billion this year as construction activity ramps up due to upcoming major events across the region.

Despite the recent challenges in the market – due to fiscal pressures and falling oil prices – there doesn’t seem to be much slowdown in the fit-out sector, with analyst expectations showing an increased emphasis on commercial, retail and hospitality projects across the region, with the UAE leading the way with an expected growth of 15% to 20% this year.

As we approach Expo 2020, the hospitality and leisure sector is expected to remain a key growth area, with an increased focus on refurbishment as clients look to reinvent existing spaces rather than building new structures. Last year, there were several awards for hotel refurbishment projects to cater for the growing demand from both international and regional tourism, while this year continues to see a strong pipeline of projects.

However, with any opportunity comes challenges, and there are many challenges facing the fit-out contracting industry – amongst them is how to manage projects in a timely and efficient manner. In this age of tight budgets and restricted schedules, fit-out contractors must look adopt new technologies and methodologies, as they look to to survive and succeed.

It is because of this that we’re here to see how the likes of BIM technology can help optimise designs, manage better and timely project delivery and predict costs, to increase profitability."

The key theme on the evening was to highlight the benefit of BIM from all stages of the project from design to field execution & project management to handover and finally how BIM can support O+M.

Overarching this theme was also looking at how to take design to the next level with Virtual & Augmented Reality – can not only help stakeholders and project teams visualize the design intent, but how this technology can also support project teams through construction and operations and maintenance stages of the project.

Why fit-out?

The fit-out sector and Autodesk share interesting parallels: 

1.      Design is close to our hearts

In the same week that the Commercial Design Awards were held, it would be fair to say designs and visualisations that become a reality through construction with the biggest wow factor would have been the winners on the night. In the same way that companies continuously pushing the envelope with design, Autodesk moved people from 2D to 3D, and AutoCAD to Revit; and with the emergence of BIM, data and artificial intelligence, continuously develop tools to help our customers imagine, design & make anything.

2.      Convergence of manufacturing & construction

Many turnkey fit-out contractors go end to end from make (in a joinery workshop using manufacturing principles), to assembling on site. 

Perhaps in some ways the fit-out sector should be considered the visionaries when it comes to the fast-growing area of companies offering offsite construction and pre-fabrication. This news link amplifies very well the convergence and growth of the Gulf’s ‘fit-out project’ and ‘eco-friendly furniture manufacturing sector’ almost as if they are one.

The AEC industry is beginning to learn from applying manufacturing methodology to the process of constructing buildings. In an industry of high risk and low margin, where project typically take 20% longer to finish than the schedule and are up to 80% over budget which makes the challenge to solve this really appealing. 60% of construction projects fail to meet cost and schedule targets, 30% of all construction cost is rework. And construction accounts for 40% of all waste.

Technology must play its part in helping us make more, do it better and with less negative impact.

3.      Autodesk technology can meet the challenges of fit-out projects

At last count and ahead of our event, I had listed 32 challenges from: -

“capturing the design intent”

“change is inevitable”

• in this vein a PM explained to me that his company saw 600 changes changes on a 3-month hotel refurb project, and he almost said with exasperation that “we cannot do this on spreadheets again”

“time is of the essence”

• typically fit out projects have a duration of months or even weeks, and often the facility which is being refurbished needs to remain operational

“handover stage needs to be more efficient and frictionless”

...and many more. 

While it goes without saying that planning, safety and quality are all paramount, the four most popular challenges that were highlighted by the audience and forming the basis of our presentation were…

Office to Field (and back)

Vijay Raina presented the evolution of CAD to more sophisticated designing using BIM tools and workflows, explaining how you can bring designs to life with Revit Live providing a relatively quick and easy VR experience for your customers and project stakeholders, all of which can be achieved using Autodesk AEC Collections. [Please also check out this excellent VR with AEC Collections LinkedIn Post by Samuel Macalister of Autodesk.]

Going beyond design, Vijay discussed the emergence of Autodesk cloud technology and how BIM360 can take your designs (and documentation) to the field enabling your project teams to be more efficient in delivery; how you contractors can close out and handover timelier and efficiently and with less friction utilizing the same platform.  

Being in a mainly business development role, one of the points Vijay made that I thought was particularly noteworthy (in the office to field and back) was bringing your As Built (data) back to BIM. I’m obviously thinking about companies winning ‘Repeat Business’ here.

A potential scenario could unfold where you’ve successfully handed over a project using BIM. A year or so down the line the same customer calls you and wants to make some changes to his office environment.

Rather than starting again from scratch…

“Imagine sitting with the client, opening the model and simulating his proposed design changes in real-time?”

...and then with this intelligent data, create an extract of the materials needed for your client’s estimate there and then.

Whether the project demand BIM, or more traditional information management; massive efficiencies can be realized by eliminating the multitude of systems in use to help support manual processes and the paperchase.

A quick poll of any audience will reveal that companies are still storying data on shared drives, using FTP to move large files around, and then over-relying on email (i.e. sending an email to inform someone that you’ve just sent them a large file and explaining the contents). The whole process gets further complicated when you start receiving responses to those emails and discover the FTP link has timed out when the other party needs to again check things. We may also use a standalone viewing and mark up tool to be able to comment on a file, but without any supporting workflow which means information isn’t easily disseminated, we’re back to email, or using WhatsApp and SMS in the field to communicate. ALL of which can be wiped out with a very easy fix.  

Although we strive to become paperless, there are many documents that still need to be produced (think passes and permits), much of the other project documentation can be automated, such as inspection checklists. 

Issues Management (or snagging or defects management as often referred) is what an area that I believe can result in a quick win for a contractor by investing in a mobile field solution. All too often we see operatives wrestle with a multitude of artefacts from manual checklists, scale rules, camera phone – capturing images which are getting bigger and bigger, spreadsheets, email etc. By automating this process, the contractor can (who is no doubt under huge pressure to close-out the project on time) can make massive gains in time.

I’ve seen cases where a 800% ROI has been realized!

Again, with BIM not only can the contractor enjoy an efficient close out, but the client can also enjoy a frictionless handover.

At a recent CIOB – Autodesk Roundtable on digital transformation, I noted this comment from Paul Connolly of Mace Group: -

“We just did our first 360 Field job. The client was adamant he didn’t want any asset information but at the end we showed him what we had. And he was then willing to pay to have it.”

So not only a case of using a tool for efficient close out, there was some added value here for the client and a bonus for the contractor.

Turning to handing over our project – which may have only lasted for 3-month, and get to the 12-month DLP, we need to be smarter in protecting our profitability. A contractor recently explained to me that they were concerned that they had no mechanism in place to know whether his DLP team had been back to the customers site to repair the same piece of equipment five times. The consequence of this scenario goes without saying, and mitigating the risk in eroding our profit is where the right technology is needed, but that technology is telling you that you are attending to the same piece of equipment the second time round.

Taking visualization to the next level

Chris Bryson of Sublime / Soluis took us on a journey by demonstrating how far you can go with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. 

Walking into the 4mtr x 4mtr portal was an incredible experience, and I was able to have an immersive experience of a university campus, race-track (really felt like I was moving – although I wasn’t), hotel lobby just by one of Chris’s team selecting a new experience from his smartphone… think Holodeck from Star Trek – The Next Generation, and you wouldn’t be far off. 

But Virtual and Augmented Reality is a lot more than just creating a wow experience. The technology helps project stakeholders visualize the project in context, but by bringing the BIM model to construction site and overlaying it in a mixed reality experience, could help design teams in their review process, and the project team pinpoint issues, and connect this information with geolocation information, so you have much richer data.

Autodesk’s Forge is a development platform. By creating a platform with an open API, many companies can now build solutions using Forge, and in the case of Sublime / Soluis can develop their custom immersive solutions using Forge as a gateway to receive source data from Revit and send information back out to BIM360 for use in the construction stage.

In closing, and on the using the Forge theme, I talked about how this platform (which BIM360 is built on) becomes part of a much bigger ecosystem. SmartVid.io for example, works with Autodesk BIM360 and the Forge Platform to take real life footage from a construction site, find an issue and then come back with risk predictions. All construction projects have many images and videos taken every step of the way. Smartvid.io has developed a “smart photo and video management platform” that uses synthetic vision and deep learning to tell you important things about your project like people on the job site not wearing hard hats or safety glasses. 

In my many years advising customers on technology, I like to ‘join up the dots’, and in a previous role I often extolled the value in linking pre-con estimating to post-contract cost accounting, with an aim to ultimately link costs to a back-office accounting system. I heard this “must integrate” requirement from customers more than 100 times, but I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the vision become a reality. Post contract, re-working the budget, value-engineering and scheduling the work and costing to how the project rolls out in stages, means the contractor typically re-invents the wheel for how he manages costs on each new project.

But I believe BIM really does makes the joining up possible, and what we covered during our focus session is a way to show a fit-out contractor today how in using BIM they can…

1. win with design and visualization 
2. how they can take BIM to the field and deliver on the design intent
3. efficiently close-out and handover, and...
4. win repeat business when the client comes back to you

This is a very simple start, and represents a number of quick wins, but the benefits of BIM are more far reaching, and according to Peter Trebicock at BIM4FitOut, there are over sixty benefits for using BIM, and to echo what Peter’s saying, benefits can be realized for all project stakeholders.

Phil Auguste is an AEC technology advisor at Autodesk